Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Jack Warn­er has crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for urg­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers to vote for par­ty rather than an in­di­vid­ual.As hun­dreds of ex­u­ber­ant fans sur­round­ed him at Rien­zi Com­plex on Tues­day night, Warn­er said, "I want to make a point about the Prime Min­is­ter who is say­ing vote par­ty? You think peo­ple will come to the par­ty when they have an is­sue? They come to the in­di­vid­ual. So you must vote for ser­vice and rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

Warn­er made the com­ment as he pre­pared to face the UNC's screen­ing com­mit­tee for a chance to be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent the par­ty in the Ju­ly 29 Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion.He was re­fer­ring to a call by the PM urg­ing sup­port­ers to re­turn the UNC to pow­er dur­ing a Mon­day night meet­ing in Cunu­pia.In ral­ly­ing sup­port­ers, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "De­fend your par­ty and let us keep Ch­agua­nas West in the UNC and in­side of the Gov­ern­ment. Vote for the ris­ing sun. Do not look for name and any­thing you know. All you have to look for is the ris­ing sun," she said.In de­fend­ing her po­si­tion, she added: "Peo­ple do not vote for me, peo­ple did not vote for any MP here. They vot­ed for the par­ty and the Part­ner­ship. The day an MP for­gets that is when we will see the back of that MP."

On Tues­day, a mu­sic truck blared ca­lyp­so and chut­ney hits ser­e­nad­ing Warn­er when he ar­rived for his screen­ing. Ju­bi­lant sup­port­ers shout­ed, "We want Jack Warn­er." Some of them car­ried ban­ners which read, "Hin­dus sup­port Warn­er," "The Voice of the Peo­ple is the Voice of God" and "Right­eous­ness ex­alts a na­tion." At one point, some of Warn­er's sup­port­ers clashed with sup­port­ers of Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­habir, who was al­so screened.How­ev­er, Manohar Ram­saran, who was al­so screened on the night, was sub­se­quent­ly told he did not qual­i­fy as he was still a mem­ber of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple. The COP has al­so since kicked him out of the par­ty for break­ing par­ty rules by run­ning for a UNC po­si­tion.Cur­rent Tu­na­puna Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair Khadi­jah Ameen, who is al­so cur­rent­ly act­ing UNC chair, was al­so screened and has now been tipped for the po­si­tion.Four oth­er can­di­dates, Mantab Mo­hammed, Har­ry Mon­ian, Har­ry­dath Ma­haraj and Manohar Singh, were al­so screened Tues­day, but they are said to be well out of the race.